How Many Times Should You Call a Bank (for Notes and REO)?

I found the video above with Tibor Shanto from SellBetter.ca and I had to reach out and ask permission to repost it here for you. Tibor is from Canada so when he’s talking about “Sellers” he means salespeople. When I’m talking about “sellers” I’m talking about people looking to move assets – just for clarification’s sake.

This video is perhaps the perfect introduction to the rest of this post.

Are You a “One-and-Done’er?”

How many times do you call on a prospect?

If you’re working with banks or other institutional sellers, I don’t care if you’re an investor, a broker, a bird-dog, a “flipper”, you’re in sales.

It may be that you’re selling “a fast close” or “immediate liquidity for non-performing notes” whatever it is… trust me, you’re in sales. So let’s talk about what a solid prospecting plan looks like.

But first…

Too often I’ll hear from people who want to try the business out. They get all fired up about making money then they contact me 30, 60, 90 days later and say

Worse than being sad its a drag on the industry. It clogs up the works. If your stamina can only take you 30 or 60 or 90 days into an endeavor do everybody a favor and get out of real estate – forever. Because you’re not cut out for it. Showing up to annoy a few people and say some stupid stuff for a month doesn’t help anybody. Quit now.

But You’re a Professional

OK, so now that all the drips have gone off to write me hate mail and it’s just you and me talking let’s get real.

If a sale doesn’t happen like Tibor has said in the video above until between the 5th or 12th contact then you need a plan to be able to get to the finish line.

What does your first contact look like? Your second? Your twelfth? Chances are you don’t have this mapped out and your answer is that you don’t know… and thats OK, but let’s make a plan.

Let’s not just make a plan let’s develop a system.

When you work from a system you become a deal doing machine. You feed potential leads into the hopper at the front end and auto-magically your machine spits out deals on the other.

One of the best explained clearest plans I’ve seen is Gary Keller’s 8X8 and 33 Touch system. This can be applied to nearly any prospecting.

Gary’s system involves an intensive once per week contact for the first 8 weeks followed by 33 more touches over the course of a year. What would happen if you put together and then executed a strategy like this.

What would happen if you implemented a plan to systematically contact your top 200 or 300 contacts from the top 100 banks that you want to do business with, on a schedule, for the next 12 months?

Be the (Wo)Man With a Plan

Try this.

Determine who the best 100 banks or other institutional sellers are for you based on their portfolios and the vitals we talk about.

Start identifying contacts to add to your system so that eventually you have 150-300 (1-3 per bank-ish)

Write out a contact plan

Execute the contact plan for each contact

What’s your plan going to consist of?

I’ve talked before about the fact that you need to be adding value to the lives of your prospects or the business is going to go to someone who is. Think about where it is that you can add value and start putting together some materials.

You can talk about valuations, the state of the industry “How to” maximize your return on X or Y, San Diego (or Vegas, or Boston) single family home price trends, WHATEVER, there is something you know about and your prospect can benefit from and you can send it to them… and if you can’t come up with anything smart then send holiday cards with a reminder of what you do or a Starbucks gift card, send something of value.

A Prospecting Blueprint

Let’s have a look at what an example prospecting blueprint might look like. Let’s say that 8X8 makes you nervous and 33 sounds crazy and you want to go a little easier.

We’ve agreed you’re going to add 50 prospects into the hopper per week for the next 4 weeks. Each time you do this is what the pattern is going to look like (I’ve pasted this as a spreadsheet image at the bottom of this post in case you’re a geek like me).

…. and so on for as long as you’re in the business and feel free to add people as you go in batches or individually but give them all the same well thought out treatment.

Look at what happens above. In the beginning is where all the “heavy lifting” comes in but guess what – if you break down these numbers into bite-sized pieces it really isn’t that much at all.

For the first 10 weeks of “heavy lifting” you’re only talking about 10 calls and 10 emails on average per day.

After you hit “cruising altitude” you’re only talking about an average of 5-6 calls and 5-6 emails per day.

If you’re looking at this saying “man that’s a lot of stamp licking” – STOP thinking like that. You can get stuff professionally printed and mailed first class, even an 8 page newsletter, for as little as 70 cents you’ll simply upload your list, set it and forget it.

There will be no doubt in your prospects mind about who you are, what you do and how you can help.

Heck if all you did was mail something once a month you’d be MILES ahead of your competitors.

Putting together a plan for well thought out systematized prospecting might be the most important thing you ever do in your career.

Agreed that the 8×8 and 33 touch are the best lead generation systems in the real estate business. The hard part is executing consistently. I have had good luck with Quantum Mail for the post pieces. Now if someone would only make all the calls for me…. ;)

Looks interesting. What is their pricing? The book “Value Added” (about RE investment sales) gave a good tip of just hiring a “paid prospector” who just calls and calls until they can get to the right person.

They have a variety of plans. One of their big things is there’s no latency in the transfer to the DM so its a lot more natural. It’s definitely only for serious prospectors/salespeople… which means that you should definitely sign up Thomas.

Sounds like a great plan. What investment do you estimate carrying out a plan like that might be required. I’d really, really, really love to start and maintain a system like that, but how do we sustain that financially if we are not generating an income in the mean time?